Integrated Studies: You Mean It's All One World?

I find many aspects of the Edutopia article "Schools That Work: Mixing Art + Politics - Integrated Studies in High School", to be breathtakingly simple but important in contemporary pedagogy.

First, I truly love to be reminded of the notion that subject areas are not separate in any way. I remember stumbling upon this thought as a high school student, and it making a world of difference in my studies. Seeing the real connections between French class, geography, and history made these topics suddenly come alive. Why then do we as high school teachers so often separate and divide our subject areas as if they did not influence and contribute to the same world?

I am inspired by the (sparring) use of technology to combine two seemingly dissimilar topics such as Government and Art. The collaboration between classes obviously took some time and effort by the teachers, but it obviously paid off. This sort of collaboration is often stressed by many as one of the most important skills of the future, and yet how often do we set the boundary of learning at our own subject or classroom?

While I often champion the subject I teach (English) to be beyond a hard and clear curriculum, I know that over the years, the focus of my class has often retreated into an insulated, safe-harbor of activity. Instead of blogging this afternoon, I think I’ll go try to convince a colleague in another subject area to collaborate next semester.